Ingrid Pitt, star of many movies, shares her Holocaust experience in a film for the first time.
Bill Plympton, two-time Academy Award nominee is designing and lending his animation.
For more on Bill’s work, please visit: http://plymptoons.com
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
Everyone has been touched by the Holocaust. I am directing an animated short based on the experience of Holocaust survivor, Ingrid Pitt, who later became a film and television star with animator Bill Plympton.
It’s an interesting and unique story. In 1937, Ingoushka Petrov was born in Poland to a German father and a Jewish mother. When the Nazis invaded, she and her family were imprisoned in the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland.
“Ingrid Pitt: Beyond The Forest” is a short film that depicts her struggle and ultimate survival. It is to be directed by me, Kevin Sean Michaels and animated by two-time Academy Award nominee Bill Plympton (www.plymptoons.com).
The evacuation of prisoners from the Stutthof camp system in northern Poland began in January 1945. Ingrid and her mother were sent to the gas chamber. They sat there for hours. Nothing happened. They were told by SS guards that the camp ran out of the supply of gassing agent Zyklon B. The group of prisoners were told to march, ultimately a death sentence. As the prisoners moved along the road outside the camp, the SS guards were attacked by Soviet forces on the ground and by air by the British.
Pitt and her mother jumped into a ditch and pretended to be dead. They escaped into the woods, never to look back.
Like Anne Frank, she dreamed of starring in movies after the war.
In Berlin, Germany in the 1950s, Ingrid married an American soldier and ended up living in California. After her marriage failed, she returned to Europe but after a small role in a film, she headed to Hollywood where she worked as a waitress while trying to make a career in the movies.
In the early 1960s Pitt was a member of the prestigious Berliner Ensemble, under the guidance of Bertolt Brecht’s widow, Helene Weigel. In 1965 she debuted in Doctor Zhivago, playing a minor role. In 1968 she co-starred in the science fiction film The Omegans and in the same year played in Where Eagles Dare opposite Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.
In the 1970s, her work with Hammer Film Productions movies, and on television that elevated her to a household name in the UK. In total, Pitt has appeared in over 30 movies.
